


Don't let it make you cry, Recuérdame

by Splatx



Series: Evan, also known as "This is a Bad Idea(TM) [2]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Awkward Crush, Character Study, Character Studying another Character, Crushes, Evan - Freeform, Flirting, Fluff, Guitar lessons, How Do I Tag, I Will Go Down With This Ship, I'm making it a thing, Implied Character Death, Is that a thing, It's how she flirts, Learning to Play Guitar, Lem is a precious, Online Main Character, Requited Crush, Songfic, Sort of? - Freeform, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, he just doesn't know it, it's not a tag so, kind of, selective mutism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25864882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splatx/pseuds/Splatx
Series: Evan, also known as "This is a Bad Idea(TM) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876702
Kudos: 5





	Don't let it make you cry, Recuérdame

###  _Don't let it make you cry  
Recuérdame _  
~Remember Me, Gael García Bernal

They’d closed the speakeasy down for the day, and it was finally quiet.

That wasn’t to say that Lem didn’t like the speakeasy—when it was open he’d sometimes go down for a drink, sit and watch the band that Evan had paid for, play bouncer if someone got a bit too drunk and rowdy (thankfully, though, Evan always stepped in before folk got out of hand when she was around, because people tended not to take him seriously), and even when he wasn’t, he was often helping Marcel with the shine or upstairs with his Aunt Maggie, so the noise didn’t bother him.

But sometimes, every once in a while, some quiet could be nice.

  
  


Aunt Maggie had gone off somewhere—she’d told him she was heading to Keane’s Saloon to broker a better deal, but he’d eat his hat if he wouldn’t find her with Cripps, and Marcel was off trying to find some ingredients that he’d sworn up and down would make the shine even more _‘magnifique’_ than usual, as the man had put it. So it was just him at the shack, and he was taking the time to do absolutely _nothing_ , just sit on his ass, kick back and relax without Aunt Maggie yanking at his ear to get him back to working.

But maybe it wasn’t his best idea—as they always seemed to lately, despite his best efforts, his thoughts went quickly to their benefactor, the woman that had rescued him, saved his life more than once, that was funding their operations and doing all the grunt work, was more or less family.

She called herself Evan, though knowing the sort of people his Aunt tended to attract, he’d wager it was fifty-fifty that that wasn’t her real name or, at least, the one her parents had given her. And she wasn’t what most would call attractive, with wild black hair that never laid flat despite her attempts at a ponytail or braid, scars nicking here and there on her face and, he was sure, all over her skin beneath her clothing. Her green eyes, he knew, would have been a ‘marketable feature’ on a bride, if they weren’t half so hard, wolfish in their way, and though he’d known her for the better part of a year he still couldn’t meet her gaze without feeling like he was staring into something wild and untamed, something he should be meeting out in the depths of the woods, moments before having his throat torn out, not standing in the midst of a bunch of drunkards in his Aunt’s basement. Beneath them, always, his eyes were drawn to that scar that gleamed on her cheek, raw, vein-like and painful-looking though it was several months healed. It was entirely his fault—he’d lost his temper and exploded a great deal of flammable moonshine, and she’d paid the price. The scar, he knew, stretched deep beneath her clothes, and would never quite heal, and he could only thank a god he wasn’t sure he believed in that she hadn’t landed that bit further into the flames, that her eye hadn’t paid the price for his foolishness.

She’d interested him since she’d saved him, putting down seemingly endless amounts of Revenue Agents as though they were little more than squirrels that she was taking pot shots off of her porch at, before protecting him all the way from half way across New Hanover to the Grizzlies, shooting easily from her horse’s back despite having him in her way. But over time he’d found himself a bit _too_ interested in her, sniffing along at her heels during deliveries, and found himself so obvious after she’d fought off an entire train of them when his ingredient delivery had gone _incredibly wrong_ that Aunt Maggie had started poking fun at him.

Thankfully, Evan hadn’t seemed to realize or, at least, she’d taken pity on him enough to spare him the shame of being turned down. After all, she was an outlaw through and through, putting down so many Revenue Agents that he hadn’t the faintest clue how they still had any left, destroying their wagon stops when she was out and about, managing to slaughter dozens despite smoke hiding them and making her eyes water and being half dead after being blown off her feet. Why would she want someone such as him?

  
  


He sighed, stretching out on his bed, only to freeze when he heard… something.

Something that _definitely_ shouldn’t have been there.

He was alone in the cabin, he was sure of that. Evan had been talking about getting a cat to take care of the rats that got in sometimes, though talking wasn’t the right word for it, she sketched on her journal (he was fairly certain she was illiterate, actually), but as of yet she hadn’t brought one back. And if Aunt Maggie or Marcel had come back he definitely would have heard them.

  
  


Though some might think otherwise, the life of a Moonshiner is not a ‘safe’ or ‘easy’ one. Even if you stay near your still, away from the Revenue stops, and didn’t go out on deliveries, you still were at risk of being blown up by a malfunctioning still, or being attacked by a competitor. He’d lost count of the number of times his Aunt Maggie had sent Evan out to blow up or poison a still, and though theirs was in their basement and, thus, harder to get to, it wouldn’t be completely out of the realm of possibility for someone to try and break in to poison their shine, or blow their still up, or even just blow up their shack altogether.

So, his heart pounding in his ears, he grabbed his pistol that he kept under his pillow, and climbed out of bed as quietly as he could. Creeping to the stairs, and then _down_ them, was nerve wracking, as he didn’t find anyone on the top floor, and the sound seemed to be coming from downstairs—the still? With his gun drawn, he used it to open the door that led to the cooking room, only to find it empty, but the sound became much, much clearer, and he realized, suddenly, that it came from the speakeasy.

As quietly as he could, their shack was fairly old and prone to creaking so it wasn’t very, he slunk towards the door, clutching his gun, though he was starting to think that it was some drunk that had been passed out somewhere while they were clearing it out—then again, Aunt Maggie wasn’t one to miss folk, no matter where they hid, and drunkards aren’t the best at hiding.

_“You are all I long for, all I worship and adore,”_

He froze, paused and pressed his hand against the wall—what kinda fool broke in and started singing? That didn’t sound like any of their patrons, wasn’t slurred as though drunk,

_“In other words, please be true,”_

Female, definitely female, and they didn’t have many female patrons, well, at least, didn’t have many that talked or drank. They often came with their husbands, their partners, but seldom drank or talked. So he doubted it was one of them that had hidden and stayed to… what, to sing?

_“In other words, in other words,”_

Oh, wait, he knew that guitar! Evan had even put out the money to hire a band for the speakeasy, drawing in far more patrons than they could ever have imagined, and that was definitely their guitar. It had a particular twang, a slight flatness—he was _positive_ that was their guitar, he’d been made to listen to it near constantly since she’d hired the band.

_“Iiii loooove… You.”_

  
  


They weren’t half bad, actually. Strange, in a way, with a raspy voice, though not in the way of a smoker’s. Rather low, at least for a woman’s, and breathy, but not _bad_ . And he was curious, and still wary (he _was_ a Fike, after all) so, slowly and carefully, he slipped his head into the room, and you could have knocked him over with a feather.

  
  


Fingers he’d only ever seen clad in gloves, tensed around horse reins or clenching on a gun’s trigger were flying easily across the strings of a guitar, face usually tensed with stress or concern or anger smooth and relaxed, eyes closed as she crooned, though he could have sworn he saw a flash of green but she didn’t react so surely he imagined it? An outlaw, a gunslinger, a moonshiner and bounty hunter she would never have sat idly by while someone stared her down, gun in hand,

_“Wise men say only fools rush in,”_

And _oh_ , he’d never heard her speak before, had never thought her capable of it. Next month would mark a year since he’d been freed, since Aunt Maggie re-established her business, since he’d met Evan, and in that time he’d yet to hear a single word pass her lips.

_“But I can't help falling in love with you,”_

Though, perhaps, he should have known better. He’d heard her _‘yah!’_ her horse, heard her scream when the fire crept up her face, heard her bark a startled laugh when he’d said _‘Pow! Pow! Pow!’_ so was it so surprising that she could speak?

_“Oh, shall I stay, would it be a sin,”_

Why, though, would she choose not to? Even if she hadn’t felt comfortable speaking around them in the beginning, only nodding and sighing and gesturing, surely, surely, she should have grown comfortable over time? The thing was, she _had_ , he could tell. In the beginning, she’d come and gone, stopped in long enough to put money down for Aunt Maggie and scribble down what it was to be spent on down, pick up a delivery or drop off the ingredients, or for Aunt Maggie to tell her where she needed to go.

_“Oh, if I can't help falling in love with you?”_

But, slowly, she’d stayed more and more. Plopped down at the far chair of the table, back to the wall and eyes to the door, gulping down hard-tack or whatever canned food she had with her, looking as uneasy as any wild animal would be if it were in a building.

_“Like a river flows, surely to the sea,”_

Over time, she’d stopped eating so fast, only noticeable if you were paying attention, and then one day she’d finished her hard-tack and, after a moment of intense thought, kicked her booted feet up onto the table, crossed her arms over her chest, then dropped her chin. It had looked as though she were dozing, but he’d caught her watching him and Aunt Maggie scrutinizingly from beneath the brim of her Rexroad hat.

_“Darling, so it goes, some things are meant to be.”_

As it were, however they’d acted while she’d done so seemed to pass some sort of muster, as she’d walked in the next day, shrugged off her coat and slung it over her usual chair before sitting down, hat low over her head, as she ate slowly, sipping at a can of peaches while sketching in a journal. What she was doing, he didn’t know, but her face had been awfully serious while she was doing so and so it must have been something important.

When she was done, she had tucked the journal away, swung her feet up onto the table and, plopping her hat down and tugging the brim low over her eyes, taken a nap before riding back out.

_“Take my hand, take my whole life too,”_

It had started snowing one day while she was inside, a small snowfall that turned into an all-out blizzard. Even inside with walls that she, Lem, and Marcel had worked to repair and insulate, it had been freezing, cold enough that they’d worked to move the beds down into the cook-room, huddled up in what blankets they could dig out, every jacket they had tugged around themselves.

She’d had no choice but to go out and stable her mare, tuck it away with Marcel and Maggie’s geldings, though her face had said she clearly wasn’t much happy about it. That done, she’d dragged her bedroll down with them, stretching out on the opposite of the room, as far from them as she could get, back to the wall, facing them and the door.

_“Oh, for I can't help falling in love with you.”_

He’d been dozing off perhaps an hour later, woken every time Marcel got up to fuss with the shine that was cooking, when he’d looked over and thought that she’d left. It had taken him a moment to realize that the mound of fabric was her back, and that she’d willingly turned her back to them, to the door, trusting them to protect her and wake her if something happened as she slept.

_“Oh, like a river flows, surely to the sea,”_

After that, she’d taken to sleeping at the shack, and they’d stopped having to worry that their best employee was going to lose life or limb to frostbite. He’d been startled the first time he walked in to find a bedroll tucked up in the corner of the shack, not far from ‘her’ chair, and it wasn’t long after that that she’d taken to keeping a coat in the coat closet along with them so she’d have something to wear while she dried her other near the cooking fire, almost always soaked with the drizzle that haunted the Grizzlies.

They’d have given her a room, honest, but he and Aunt Maggie were sharing a room and Marcel was already sleeping in the cooking room so they really _couldn’t_.

_“Darling, so it goes, some things are meant to be.”_

He’d tried to offer her the bed, once or twice when Aunt Maggie was out, but she’d given him a long stare, then a ticked eyebrow and a shake of her head, pointing at her bedroll. _‘I have this,’_ she was saying, and while he had tried to argue that a bed was more comfortable, she had shook her head and gestured at it more emphatically, _‘This is fine,’_ and he had learned long ago not to argue with her - besides, there was always that underlying fear of crossing some invisible line and losing what trust had been built with her, so he’d laid down on the bed, though it creaked and groaned beneath him it was a bed and infinitely more comfortable than a bedroll and he couldn’t imagine why she would prefer a bedroll.

But it was her prerogative, and he refused to risk upsetting her and losing her trust. He liked to think they were friends, or close to it, and in his sort of life you didn’t have many friends, if any, and he’d wager that she didn’t have many, either, so why hurt them both?

_“Oh, take my hand, take my whole life too,”_

Though he wasn’t sure if she actually did consider him a friend. After all, their entire relationship at this point, if it could even be called that, was her saving him and him nearly getting her killed in return. She’d broken him out of a prison wagon and brought him home, but not without the both of them nearly being shot down by several squads of lawmen and Revenue Agents. Had had to save his ass after he’d hired untrustworthy folk and left them to make a getaway on a _boat_ of all things, shooting down nearly an entire train full of Agents, and leaving her shot several times over in return. He’d even nearly killed her himself, he thought ruefully, the burn scars that gleamed and stretched and gnarled her mouth as she sang painful proof of that, losing his temper and setting off explosives that she had put down for him, and then been shot several times on top of that while he’d cut and run.

_“For I can't help falling in love with you,”_

So if she considered him little more than a liability, just a hanger-on that she had to put up with on account of working with his Aunt, well, he wouldn’t blame her in the least. It was the truth, after all, and if that wasn’t bad enough he was a liability what had gone and caught feelings for her.

_“Oh, for I can't help falling in love with you.”_

  
  


With that rather depressing thought, he moved to holster his gun and step back, remembering only when his hand flailed awkwardly that he was still in his sleep pants and, thus, had no holster, heart turning to stone in his chest at a quiet, huffed laugh.

Feeling as though he were looking into the eyes of his killer, he raised his head, coming blue-to-green, “I’m sor-,” but she snorted, and patted the ground in front of her, the ghost of an amused grin on her face, and he could do little more than obey, wondering if this was how a man felt as he were being walked to the gallows, and came to a stop in front of her, “I-I,” but she reached up and grabbed his wrist, tugging him until he knelt, then sat, pushing his shoulder until he was sitting cross legged with his back to her.

“Evan?” he asked, “I didn’t mean to watch you, I heard a no-noise and,” but she shut him up, slipping the gun out of his hand and setting it aside, and he allowed it, frozen as she rearranged herself behind him, kneeling to bracket his hips with her knees, accepting her guitar with a “What?” incredibly aware of her as she leaned against him, reaching around to adjust his grip on it, and then it clicked and “N-no I can’t play!” but she simply made a sound that could have been a ‘hmph’ or a breathy laugh.

Seemingly satisfied, she draped herself over his shoulder like a harlot, and he prayed she couldn’t see his heart racing in his chest, his pulse thrumming in his throat, he’d never known her to act like this before and would have thought her drunk but she didn’t smell of shine or any sort of alcohol, and as she was in his peripheral he couldn’t make out the red that tinted the shell of her ears.

Carefully, she adjusted her hands until they were atop his, fingers matching until it was though he were wearing a strange set of gloves, and began to move her right, nudging his along in a strumming motion. He moved with her, though clumsily and hesitant, the sound discordant, and she nodded, “Mmhm,” repeating the motion over and over until he was moving almost in sync with her, before shifting to his left hand and beginning to do the same, and oh but that was a mess.

It was much more involved, his fingers having to move and press on things, but she was patient, just ‘hmph’-ed when he got it wrong and made him do it again, and before long she removed her hands and sat back after clapping them on his shoulders as a way of saying _‘good job’_ , and when he turned to grin at her he hoped his face wasn’t as red as it felt.

She sat back on her heels, and he felt incredibly scrutinized even as he took her in—she wore little more than denim pants and a too-big plaid blue shirt with her boots; he’d never seen her so undressed before. Even still, he knew she could have him dead in the ground in a heartbeat if he so much as breathed her way funny.

Seeming to decide something, she nodded, leaning forward and pushing on his shoulder so he turned back around, picking the guitar back up when she pressed it into his hands. “I don’t know an-” but she _harrumph-ed_ and splayed herself over his shoulder again, and he had the thought of some over-sized cat stretching over her lady’s shoulder though Evan was in no way tame enough to be a mere cat, maybe a wildcat, and he tried not to laugh at the image, it damn well fit her!

She began to strum his fingers for him, and he fumbled to keep up—it was some song, not very pretty with how unpracticed his fingers were, but she was managing to pull a song out of him yet, and then she began to sing and for a moment he thought she was merely speaking and startled,

_“Remember me,”_

she inhaled, strummed his fingers carefully,

_“Though I have to say goodbye, remember me,”_

and _oh_ , she was singing, 

_“Don’t let it make you cry.”_

He’d never heard the song before, it wasn’t the kind of song performed in a speakeasy, or a saloon for that matter. Lem’s fingers fumbled, and she slowed her singing and the movements of her own fingers to account for his newness, hummed and leaned over him to help move his fingers along the strings,

_“For even if I’m far away, I hold you in my heart,”_

Surely it was a camp song? The sort of song an outlaw, a gunslinger, sang to his child before heading out to work? Or a cowboy, for that matter, and he wondered if it was something she’d been taught by her own family. It wasn’t something he thought about often, just like you don’t think about your own family’s family. He didn’t think about Evan as a child just like he didn’t think about his Aunt Maggie as a child, it always seemed as though they sprung, fully formed as he knew them, from the ground, and picturing them young and innocent and helpless was a foreign, alien thing.

_“I sing a secret song to you each night we are apart…”_

This wasn’t his sort of song or, at least, he’d never have thought it was. He’d grown up with the bawdy, raucous speakeasy music, and it was all he’d known. Lem hadn’t thought he’d care for more slow music, quiet and crooning, but with her voice crooning in his ear, so close he could feel her chest vibrating against his back, he was finding he was quick to prefer it.

_“Remember me, though I have to travel far,”_

How could a song bring him so many questions?

He knew, some, of what Evan did when she wasn’t at the shack, wasn't doing work for his Aunt. Knew she ran bounties, knew she hunted and ran deliveries for Cripps, and that she collected things to sell. But where did she go? Did she stay around the Grizzlies? Or did she go down to Lemoyne? Or was that only when she was needed to for work? The thought of her disappearing, never turning up again and never knowing if she’d ended up dead, in the stomach of a gator or the jaws of a wolf, was terrifying, and his fingers stumbled on the frets.

_“Remember me, each time you hear a sad guitar,”_

She slowed her singing and the strumming as she realigned his fingers, getting him used to the motions again, before slowly picking up the speed and starting to sing,

_“Know that I’m with you, the only way that I can be.”_

This was… nice, he had to admit, relaxing into the motions. His fingers kept tripping over each other, but she easily corrected him, slipping his fingers where they belonged and, though the sound they produced wasn’t exactly _nice,_ it was recognizable as music.

It sounded like the song was starting to end, but he didn’t _want_ it to end, so he remained where he sat, and she hesitated before continuing to guide his hands in strumming and plucking, before crooning with the same rhythm and tone as before,

_“Recuérdame, si en tu mente viva estoy,”_

And since when did she speak Spanish? He’d never known that about her, and it was easy to forget that he knew very little about her. Didn’t know how old she was, where she lived if she actually lived somewhere, if she had a family, hell, he hadn’t even known she could _talk!_ But the Spanish in his ear was soothing, was nice, and he found himself relaxing enough that she had to prod his fingers to remind him to move them, and from the way she huffed it was obvious that he’d gone as red as he felt.

_“Recuérdame, mis sueños yo te doy,”_

Christ, but he hoped she didn’t feel how he shivered, the Spanish ghosting against his ear affecting him far too much. Her voice was nice, though odd, pitching up higher than it had been when she was singing in English, but still just as raspy and breathy, and by then she’d gotten close enough to him that he could feel each breath caressing his ear.

This was a bad idea.

This was a bad idea.

_“Te llevo en mi corazón, Y te acompañaré, unidas en nuestra canción, contigo ahi estaré.”_

He wanted to ask her what it meant, what she was singing. Why she’d chosen that song, or if there was even a reason, if she’d just chosen it because the guitar part was easier than the other songs she knew (though that wasn’t saying much, he was still having a hard time even with her fingers guiding his and going at a pace he thought was slow even for that song) but considering she’d yet to say a word despite him knowing that she could, in fact, speak he thought his chances of getting an answer were not the best.

_“Recuérdame, si sola crees estar, recuérdame, y mi cantar te irá a abrazar,”_

How had this happened?

How in all hell had he gone from intending on shooting an intruder to more or less sitting in her lap, reclining against her chest with her hands on his, her breath ghosting over the shell of his ear, knees cradling his hips? Not that he was _complaining_ of course, but he couldn’t believe that this was actually happening, that this wasn’t a dream.

Things like this don’t _happen_ to him.

_“Aun en la distancia, nunca vayas a olvidar. Que yo contigo siempre voy, recuérdame.”_

She released his hands, and he fumbled, but continued playing—it was a rhythm, the same fingering, over and over again, and though he stumbled and sounded even worse than before he managed to do so, and the grin he could feel against the side of his face from where she’d leaned forward to watch made it worth it. He nearly dropped the guitar when she hesitantly wrapped her arms around his shoulders to help her keep his balance, so tense against him it felt almost as though she’d release and go bouncing across the room if he so much as breathed wrong.

_“For I will soon be gone, remember me,”_

The sudden switch back to English startled him, and he fumbled the guitar, catching it before she could let go of him, struggling to find where he’d let off as she huffed a laugh in his ear, chest vibrating against his back. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had so much human contact, so much physical contact period, and he’d never known her to care for it either. Lem had only ever known pats on the back or the shoulder, the glance of her gloves against his fingers as he passed things to her. He’d seen her love up her horses, of course, but never seen her willingly touch a human more than she had to.

Of course, he wasn’t complaining. Still, though, he wondered what had made her act so odd.

_“And let the love we have live on. Know that I'm with you the only way that I can be,”_

Her voice had become raspier, tired, as though singing so much had worn it out, and he wondered if that was _why_ she didn’t talk so much or if it was _because_ she didn’t talk, if talking so little made her voice sound so worn out, becoming more strained as she used it, the opposite of a wagon wheel, where a wagon wheel loosened up after working her voice did the opposite. Or if she didn’t talk much _because_ her voice became fatigued when she did so?

_“Until you're in my arms again… remember me.”_

Her voice hung for a long moment in the air as she slowly removed her hands from his shoulders, giving them a squeeze and allowing her forehead to press between his shoulder blades before sitting back on her heels. Lem sat for a long moment, the silence so thick as to be able to be cut with a knife, wondering if she would start another song, but only their breathing filled the air, so he kept a careful grip on the guitar as he turned the face her, unable to make out the expression on her face, an odd twist to her lips, her eyes hazy.

“Why-” why what? Even Lem didn’t know. Why was she singing? Why hadn’t she kicked him out? Why had she been so touchy? Why had she tried to teach him to play? There were a lot of why’s there though, knowing Evan, he was almost certain he wouldn’t get an answer.

And he was right. She simply give him a grin that stopped him, more sincere than he’d ever gotten from her before, a soft one that eased the fierceness of those green eyes of her’s, and stood, taking the guitar after his hands, patting his shoulder as she passed him by, leaving the guitar leaning against the wall as she left.

  
  


When Evan left the shack that night, she never came back.

Cripps came by a few weeks later, asking after her, and thought she’d been working with them. They’d thought the same.

_For even if I'm far away_

_I hold you in my heart_

Months passed, and she never came back. A bounty hunter that she’d worked under sought them out, and a fortune teller, too, an ex-trophy hunter and some woman who said she could commune with animals, all sniffing after her, and all never having seen her after she’d walked out of their shack.

Lem had been the last one to see her, and some of them didn’t believe him. And why would they? Evan wasn’t one to talk, much less to sing. So he started to change his story, saying that they’d shared a drink down in the speakeasy, and that was that.

Besides, it had always felt intimate, like something special, and even telling Aunt Maggie when she’d come to him had felt like he was betraying Evan, like he was breaking some unspoken promise.

_Remember me_

_Each time you hear a sad guitar_

Life went on. It had to. Evan had gotten their foot back in the door, and he continued making deliveries, had to quickly fill her shoes and clear out the Revenue Agent’s wagon stops, build relationships with their buyers, sabotage other stills. He still caught Aunt Maggie looking startled when it was he and not her that came in the door, caught Marcel going to call him _patronne_ only to catch himself and call him _patron,_ and even caught himself looking for her when fights broke out in the speakeasy.

But life went on.

_Remember me_


End file.
